The land acquisition to build an airstrip in Malkangiri district has been halted due to non-issuance of forest diversion proposal.
According to official sources, the Government will convert 13.233 hectares of forest land into non-forest land for the proposed project, which is estimated to cost Rs 15 crore.
To divert the parcel of forest land, the Government needs to identify 26.466 hectares (two times of the forest land) of land at a suitable place for plantation to compensate for the loss of forest land. The State had identified the required 26.466 hectares of land and submitted the forest diversion proposal to the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change. However, the Ministry has rejected the proposal as the non-forest land identified for compensatory afforestation is not contiguous to forest area, sources said. Therefore, the Works Department, the implementation agency for the project, has once again asked the Malkangiri Collector to find out alternative land for planting of trees under compensatory afforestation programme to divert the original forest land of 13.35 ha.
Once constructed, the airstrip will provide better connectivity to the district and will be used by the security forces for combating Maoist activities.
At present, the State has two operational airports at Bhubaneswar and Jharsuguda. The airstrips at Jeypore and Utkela are being made ready for operation of UDAN flights. Bidding for two routes has been conducted recently and bids received are under evaluation for award, the sources said.